FROM EIRE TO AOTEAROA

The Callaghan, McCarthy, Dealy, McKewen and Brennan Families

The Eóganacht Clan of Chaisil (Cashel) ruled the Irish Dynasty of Munster from the 5^th to the 10^th centuries. Their king, Ceallachán (Callaghan) who died ca 953, ousted the Vikings from the Province and his grandson led the Carthaígh (MacCarthy) Clan at Cashel. MacCarthy Mòr, with the MacCarthy Prince of Carbery, the MacCarthy Lord Muskerry and The MacDonogh, ruled the Kingdom of Desmond until ‘they were all gone’ by the mid-17^th century.

The Lord of O’Callaghan’s Country was transported ‘to Hell or Connacht’ in the West of Ireland, and probably our Roman Catholic Callaghan family. The Callaghan family settled in Roscommon at the townland of Lisduff. A son from the O’Daly family of Galway changed his name to Dealy when he settled at Bantry Bay. During the Irish Famine and at time of the Victorian Gold-rush, two McKewen brothers from Armagh, a Kilkenny girl by the name of Brennan and a McCarthy widow and her children from Tipperary arrived in Australia.

A McKewen brother married the Brennan girl and they made their home in Dunedin, New Zealand. Members of the Bantry Dealy/Daly family arrived in New Zealand as ‘Dealy’; one sibling obtained a lease on Wellington’s Railway Hotel. His brother married a McKewen from Dunedin and they brought up their family at ‘the Railway’. At the turn of the twentieth century Paddy Callaghan, a coal-miner from Lisduff, married the daughter of a McCarthy Brother in Fyansford, Victoria. The couple settled in Wellington and their daughter married the eldest Dealy son.

ISBN 9780473490614

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